Linked List: January 24, 2011

Monday, 24 January 2011

‘My Trilogy Kicks Your Trilogy’s Ass’ T-Shirts ★

The power of typographic branding.

How the iPhone Mail App Decides When to Show You New Mail Messages ★

Details matter.

Arik Hesseldahl: Apple Hires David Rice as Global Director of Security ★

Arik Hesseldahl:

Apple has tapped security expert and author David Rice to be its director of global security, several sources have confirmed to me. He’s expected to start at Apple in March. […]

He’s a 1994 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and has a master’s degree in Information Warfare and Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School. He served as a Global Network Vulnerability analyst for the National Security Agency and as a Special Duty Cryptologic officer for the Navy. […]

His 2007 book, “Geekonomics,” has been described as the software industry’s equivalent of Ralph Nader’s “Unsafe at Any Speed.” In it he argues that software is modern infrastructure — just like a bridge (hence, the picture on the cover) — and if it’s poorly made or insecure, it constitutes a public hazard.

The Monkeys You Ordered ★

“Literal New Yorker cartoon captions”. Count me in with Elaine Benes (and, presumably, Larry David): I generally don’t find New Yorker cartoons to be funny at all. But re-captioned literally, they’re fucking hilarious. Sadly, the author of The Monkeys You Ordered has just posted an entry that suggests Condé Nast might be trying to shut the site down. I say Condé Nast should buy the site and hire the guy.

Google Search vs. Content Farms ★

Google’s Matt Cutts responds to the spate of recent complaints about the rise of content farm sites in Google search results. (Examples: Jeff Atwood, Vivek Wadhwa at TechCrunch, Richard MacManus at ReadWriteWeb, and maybe the most comprehensive: Anil Dash.)

Cutts’s response is a little circuitous, to say the least. He spends the first few paragraphs talking about outright search spam. That’s not the issue at hand. Content farms aren’t spam in the classic sense — they’re low-quality ham that is designed specifically to appear within search results. And it’s a real problem. In response to Google’s very effective defenses against outright spam, it’s like spammers have evolved to become as minimally spammy as possible to get through Google’s defenses. It’s insidious.

What’s worrisome about content farmers is their means of monetization: typically, Google AdSense. This leads to the cynical conclusion that Google doesn’t see it as a problem at all when such sites are ranked too high in search results. Cutts addresses this charge head-on:

To be crystal clear:

Google absolutely takes action on sites that violate our quality guidelines regardless of whether they have ads powered by Google;

Displaying Google ads does not help a site’s rankings in Google; and

Buying Google ads does not increase a site’s rankings in Google’s search results.

I have my share of criticism for Google these days, but I believe Cutts. “Trust but verify”, though — let’s see when these changes actually appear.

Immaculate Reception ★

Jim Matthews on how his iPhone got online in England, despite having data roaming turned off and not having connected it to his hotel’s Wi-Fi network.

Update: Fireballed at the moment. Cache.

Cook : Apple :: Ballmer : Microsoft ? ★

Paul Thurrott:

And I think there are some parallels to draw between this event (Cook’s taking over day-to-day operations at Apple, expected to be permanent) and Steve Ballmer’s ascension at Microsoft. And not to ruin the surprise, but this may be bad news for Apple. The simplest way to explain this is to simply provide the closing quote in the article: “He will not be the visionary, but that’s O.K. because there are other talented people around him.” Sure. That’s what they said about Ballmer too. Just a thought.

I’m not linking to this to be inflammatory, and, I don’t think Thurrott posited this analogy to be inflammatory. There are some parallels: an operations executive succeeding a visionary product-oriented founder. But, I’d say Cook-as-Ballmer is pretty much the worst case scenario for Apple.

The warnings signs with Ballmer have been there for years. He’s been out of touch for a long time. Remember when he laughed at the iPhone? Said it had “no chance”? Let’s not worry about Tim Cook until he starts saying dumb things.

NY Post: ‘Google CEO Eric Schmidt Considering a Career in TV’ ★

It’s The New York Post, so take it with a grain of salt, but still:

Sources say the outspoken chief, who broke the news that he’s passing the CEO title to 37-year-old co-founder Larry Page in a sarcastic tweet — “Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed!” — has been consulting with CNN’s “Parker Spitzer” executive producer Liza McGuirk on developing a show featuring himself as host.